Top 5 altcoin picks 2018

SALE - Get you cheap altcoins here!

For anyone invested in cryptocurrencies, the the start of 2018 was painful. Very painful. As bitcoin (BTC) has been hammered to below the $8,000 mark, altcoins (typically traded vs BTC) have been taking even tougher blows. Numerous portfolios have been decimated, including my own. However the current prices also present great opportunities for anyone looking to invest in altcoins. Huge opportunities in my view. Even if you don't have any FIAT left, converting your BTC to altcoins may still earn you some great returns in the coming months.
For this reason I have created a selection of the most promising altcoins for 2018, which may be worth considering to add to your portfolio too!

• Ethereum (ETH) - One of the most obvious picks that many people will already have in their portfolio. However given what is in store for ETH, one might want to accumulate more of it. First of all, POS will be introduced, which will lead to more people holding ETH to receive coins as a form of 'interest'. Combined with the lower rewards for mining, leading to a decrease in supply, should have a very positive effect on the price of ETH. Second, to increase the maximum amount of transactions per second as bunch of options (Raiden, Plasma and Sharding) are being tested of which I believe some form of mixture will be introduced this year. Obviously this would be a huge boost to ETH price as the main criticism has always been about scalabilty. Third, 2018 is set to become a record-breaking year in terms of ICO's, the majority of which will take place on the Ethereum network. The associated demand for ETH and gas usage associated with the use of the network should increase demand considerably and thus the price of ETH.

Current price: $850.- or 0.102 BTC
Recommended to buy up to $1,200.-
Current MC: $82.5 bln

• Substratum (SUB) - My fourth pick for 2018. Substratum aims to decentralize the internet by allowing anyone to use their spare computing power to contribute to create internet free f central interference. With the amount of internet censorship out there (e.g. China, Russia but also of course the US), SUB is becoming increasingly relevant. In addition, another great benefit of decentralized internet would be that it would become much harder to perform DDOS attacks on companies' websites. This would be the case when machine learning allows "efficient and different paths to be taken by anybody connecting to a website", countering the effect of DDOS atacks. More on this can be found here

Current price: $0.66 or 0.00007800 BTC
Recommended to buy up to $1.50
Current MC: $145 mln

• Lumens (XLM) - XLM has already seen an incredible amount of growth in late 2017. However given the the traction of the currency and the great capabilities of the network, it should be able to overtake Ripple (XRP) in market cap, which implies a growth of 5 times current market cap (relative to XRP). XLM is aiming to do what XRP is doing (but decentralized while being guided by a non profit organisation) and then some. Recently it announced a partnership with IBM and more importantly it aims to implement smart contracting in Solidity which is "more user-friendly and simpler" than what is currently used in ETH and as a result it may "remove the necessity of having to hire solidity experts." More on this can be found here

Current price: $0.38 or 0.00004600 BTC
Recommended to buy up to $0,65
Current MC: $7 bln

• Quantstamp (QSP) - My second pick goes to QSP, which is a smart contract security auditing token. The basic idea behind the token is that team designing smart contracts e.g. ICO's can request a security audit with Quantstamp, who get paid in ICO tokens. These tokens are then redistributed among QSP owners via airdrops. There are already lots of use cases out there of successful audits and the demand for these in 2018 may skyrocket. If it does, QSP holders will receive a great return on their investments.

Current price: $0.23 or 0.00002870 BTC
Recommended to buy up to $0.85
Current MC: $142 mln

• Ethos (BQX/ETHOS) - This is my absolute number 1 pick for 2018 as I believe it will be huge. Ethos will deliver a mobile universal wallet, which upon launch can hold at least the top 100 BIP32 compliant coins (based on market cap). In addition one can store traditional assets (stocks, bonds, traditional currencies like USD) on the same platform, meaning all your investments can be stored in one place and allocated via a few simple clicks, without having to go to an exchange for it as this will all be taken care off by the platform which will search for the best prices available out there. There are many more cool features on this platform, but one thing is clear, it will result in simplification of you portfolio management and make the crypto market accessible for everyone. For more details on this excellent project, the reader might want to refer to another Steemit post I saw today that was dedicated to ETHOS or of course one can visit their website or telegram.

Current price: $3.56 or 0.00043 BTC
Recommended to buy up to $15
Current MC: $258 mln

Obviously there are many other coins with great potential which haven't made the list today even though i invested in them, but if you have a coin which absolutely deserves to be part of the top 5, please comment below and let me know!

Stay tuned!

References:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubstratumNetwork/comments/7d4xbg/5_reasons_why_substratum_is_revolutionary/
https://substratum.net/
https://oracletimes.com/why-stellar-xlm-will-reach-1-usd-sooner-than-you-think/
https://quantstamp.com/
https://www.ethos.io/
https://steemit.com/universalwallet/@michael21984/coinbase-coinmarketcap-blockfolio-hardware-wallet-and-ta-features-and-later-fiat-gateway-bankaccount-in-1-app

Images:
https://imediastars.nl/app-top-5/